The recent furor over the nomination and confirmation of Judge (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh puts us in mind of a messy truth for companies and businesspeople who must deal with investigations and charges of all stripes, whether as the investigator (in conducting a corporate internal investigation, for example) or as the subject of the charges (a grand jury investigation, or a regulatory enforcement action, or at trial). In order to create workable compliance programs; to advance a corporate culture the way we wish to; or to defend a company or its executives or employees, we need to come to terms with with a truth not so much “un-American” as “a-American,”…

If they give awards for “Best White-Collar Article of The Year,” I wish to nominate one. And it’s not even, strictly speaking, an article only about white-collar crime. Jed Rakoff is a federal district judge in the Southern District of New York (in other words, in Manhattan). We have mentioned Judge Rakoff before, here and here. He also famously criticized DOJ’s failure, as he perceived it, to prosecute individual executives in the financial crisis. Here, he has a thoughtful article on Why Innocent People Plead Guilty. Portions bear quoting at some length: The criminal justice system in the United States today bears little relationship to what the Founding Fathers contemplated, what the…